Hard Drive Upgrade Info

How's it going to work if one doesn't upgrade immediately and has recordings they want to move to the upgrade drive? What if CableCards are already installed before the upgrade? I know these can't be answered yet.

ok guys (and girls) after doing the same with with stock drive that did go through setup it read exactly the same. unallocated with the same space as well. I didn't take a photo because it's identical to the previous photo. What that means? I have no clue lol

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Are you using just a disc of Partition Magic, or are you using Ultimate Boot CD?

I for one would love for him to boot up some flavor of a linux utility disk and get a partition map if there is one. If there isn't one, it isn't likely that there is any point to running DVRBars.

With a reported capacity of 316 hours, it seems at least that they have finally reduced the amount of space allocated for TiVos use to a reasonable amount, thus making "supersize" unnecessary.

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Unless TiVo started using a partition and filesystem scheme that a PC with Windows ALONE using DISK MANAGER, can see, you need DVRBARS. Just like you'd use WinMFS, and not the PC's Operating System alone, but boot Windows and use WinMFS, or in this case, boot Windows and use DVRBARS.

The author of DVRBARS is fully interested in a drive backup, EVEN IF THE DRIVE SEEMS TO BE EMPTY, as well as the same drive, after it has been booted and set-up.

I can boot with partition magic and check out the stock hard drive. Give me a few minute to drag the PC up here and set it up. I will take a photo to show whatever is there (if anything).

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Partition Magic is not capable of recognizing TiVo partitions/filesystems (unless TiVo changed to one of the widely used, non-proprietary ones).

That being said, if we go with that TiVo tradition, NONE of the retail/downloadable/free partition management tools will recognize it correctly, unless it's Linux-based and the right tool for the job. Even commercial software that runs on Linux usually can't handle a TiVo structure. It's only RAW copy (sector by sector) tools that can copy or backup such things (since it doesn't care what is there, or isn't there, or if it recognizes it as a valid filesystem or partition, it just copies, even if the whole drive is blank).

Just to be clear, when I was talking about WinMFS, that's an old tool, which ran under Windows, for older TiVos, which predate the Premiere, and didn't work with the Premiere's altered structure.

DVRBARS is the new Windows-based software for dealing virtually any TiVo ever made. The author would like to make sure the software doesn't need any updates for the new products. There's only one way to help him with that. He gives us this awesome tool, FOR FREE, and at his expense. I've already spelled out what he's looking for a few times now.

Thanks. So a totally blank disk. I assume this is the one you never set up.

Any chance you do the same for the stock disk you did set up? Of course , it would also be nice to see one of the 2TB's and DVRBars of both of them but I don't really want to ask that of you. You've done an awful lot already.

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Partition Magic will very likely also identify it as blank. PM has never been able to handle/identify proprietary filesystems.

Hmmmm. I know that with Linux volume manager (LVM), you can also add an entire unpartitioned drive to the volume. I wonder if they're using some scheme like that? Not necessarily LVM but many something similar?

Yes it is. You will get to the main screen, and see HDD and hit that, then wiping, and then you will see Copywipe. Once the program boots up you will see BIOS drives, and then like youre going to wipe it, and then hit F6 for the drive to display partitions, then just ESC back out of it all after you take a pic, if you need to.

Partition Magic will very likely also identify it as blank. PM has never been able to handle/identify proprietary filesystems.

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I guess it's been many many years since I've used Partition Magic. I could very well see that it might not recognize the file system but recognizing disk partitions is much more basic than that. Maybe they've switched over to a Guid partition structure like Apple?

Why is everybody pushing for use of tools, that when used by somebody unfamiliar with them, could nuke the whole darn thing?

DVRBARS running within Windows can BACK UP the drive.

Then it is safe to fiddle away with tools that have strong potential for corrupting the disk.

If a backup is made, FIRST, then there is a backup ready to quickly restore the drive to as it was.

This push is just reckless disregard for safety, in the name of impatience!

For those who don't know already, DVRBARS takes very little time to backup a TiVo drive that has never been booted, and compresses down to sizes that can fit on small USB thumbdrives. It's also fast on a booted drive, but the size of the backup increases, as more data on the drive is changed and written to it.